Looking at a number of issues in the game, almost all problems (save perhaps, pre-nerf Phantom insanity) the core problem in the game is actually when boiled down, a single issue. I like the game, but there's an element that continues to hamper it's development and growth:

The attack mechanic.

Let me explain: Your ability to 'hit' a target, is the exact same thing as your capacity to 'damage' it. So therefore without some very awkward rules, there is no such thing as say, a 'weak attack that is accurate' or a 'strong but clumsy attack'. This has lead to pretty much every major issue in the game, including broken ordinance, issues with green dice reliability, the continuing growth of fatness, HP tanks, C3PO, and turret domination + dice stacking.

It also leads to another, more secondary issue: Running out of design space for new ships. Look at the Syck vs TIE, or the new Khirakxz based on what we know vs the X-Wing.

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Back to the main topic, I bring this up to highlight one real issue: There's only one real 'attack value' in the game: Either you're attack 3+, a basic TIE/Z95, or you don't matter.

Nobody liked the Tie/A, so it got ATC or Accuracy Corrector that 'effectively' makes it attack 3. A-Wings are largely useless, due to having pathetic attack. ORS and 2-atk Outriders don't do squat. The HWK is a hilarious joke of a weapons platform.

This incidentally places a limit on the usefulness of Agility. With no difference between 'accurate' and 'hard hitting', the same attack that can nail a 3-AGI guy just simply wrecks a 1-AGI guy. A fight between evading TIE/A and an A-Wing is an unending joke.

This also leads to the issue with Ordinance: Why should I spend points and a TL to fire an unmodified 4-die proton torpedo, when a modified 3-die Primary attack is superior? There was no difference in one being more accurate or harder hitting than the other. The mechanic doesn't allow it.

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Alas. If only 'Attack Value' was different from 'Attack Damage', or something similar, then you could see variety. A-Wings could be precise, but very weak hits that destroy Interceptors or Starvipers, but need hard hitting rockets to crack a Decimator. The Falcon could spit out lots of accurate, low-intensity fire to scrub TIEs off it's back, but then suffer against the clumsy but devastating firepower of the B-Wing. X-Wings could then have a niche by being reasonably accurate and fairly strong. Etc.

If only, but that ship's long sailed. Armada has learned by using different types of dice, to provide a greater variety not only in attack quality, but attack behavior. But it's probably too late for X-Wing to take this on.

Wouldn't that just manually shift the needle towards a rock-paper-scissors style of matchup?

Also, it's not realistic. It isn't easy to hit an evading interceptor or a-wing. If they're really good it approaches impossible. If a lot of ships are firing at it then the odds of catching it with a shot rise because someone can guess the juke left or up. I think the green dice reflect this as well as any other mechanic I can think of.

In a way, yes. But right now, there's simply 'rock, bigger rock, biggest rock'.

An HLC for example, is superior in all ways vs all targets than a 3-dice attack. It's better vs big, chunky ships, and it's better vs light fighters.

Look at it this way: An A-Wing is fast, flimsy, and dodgy. Therefore, a rapid-fire machine-gun like blaster would probably be better than a giant cannon that fires slowly: More likely to land a hit, and the ship is flimsier so that smaller hits would harm it.

But an armored Decimator? That thing's a brick of metal. Little dinky machine-guns probably shouldn't be as good against it as a big HLC.

In a way, some cards like Dual Laser Turret and Autoblasters are trying to simulate this, but most are generally just not good enough to change things.

"A weak accurate attack" perfectly describes both ion turrets and the new twin laser turret. So sure, what you want can only be applied to a handful of ships, but it exists.

Also, I've killed echo with the HWK's main guns. The second you start to consider something beneath you is the second it will beat you.

That sort of rapid-blasting gun that can land on slippery targets is only featured once in all 6 movies. I don't think it's common enough to slap a mechanic like that on a-wings. The fire rate of the turret on a decimator is about the same as the fire rate on a B-wing because they have the same tech behind them.

Actually now that I think about it...aren't you just describing the new twin turret?

Alas not.

An Ion Cannon attack is an extra cost to apply a debuff, and then do a 'standard accuracy, very weak attack, on some ships that can carry it'.

Twin Laser Turret is however, a true 'decent accuracy, weak attack'. But it's not a core mechanic that'd offer variety for stuff like premium cost 2-ATK ships, it's one very, very specific upgrade.

I'm sure somebody out there in the world has managed to roll 6 red dice from an exposed Echo at range 1 and miss... but absurdities in probabiliy aren't the point. We're talking game design, which doesn't treat outliers as anything but what they are: Crazy rare occurances outside the norm. The problem I'm postulating is that the 'Norm' is unhealthy.

Let's say we had an alternate totally hypothetical scenario: 3 attack dice. Call them 'Orange, Red, Black', with increasing 'hit harder' and decreasing 'accuracy'. Wouldn't things be more interesting if it was like so:

Orange: 1 miss, 5 hits, 1 crit, 1 focus

Red: 2 miss, 3 hits, 1 crit, 2 focus

Black: 3 miss, 1 hit, 1 crit, 3 focus

Suddenly, things look WAY different.

You could have an accurate but devastating general attack (like say, an X-Wing's, be 3 Red), while a B-Wing's hard hitting attack be 4 black. An A-Wing's light and accurate attack could be even like, 2 orange. Or even more deeper extremes can be explored where some attacks have 'double hit' icons like Armadadice.

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Also, the 'ROF' of attacks appears several times. Mostly EU though. In the video games, some attacks like X-Wing or TIE/Int shots were rapid since they were from those varied guns, while B-Wing fired big bursts.

This also applies with EU stuff, like how the E-Wing's guns were more powerful + faster firing which made up for only having 3 vs 4 vs the X-Wing.

I could see X-wing working like Armada with a couple of types of attack dice that have varying probabilities and effects. That wouldn't slow play and would add another variable to manipulate. It would actually be easy to introduce: have a ship that has "blue" attack dice (maybe 5 with a lower p(h)) that comes with the new dice, and another with "black" attack dice (maybe 2 with higher p(h)) that also comes with new dice. Then some upgrade cards could allow for substitution or trade of attack die types.

On the other hand, if the original poster is suggesting a "to hit" roll and then a "damage" roll, my answer is: No. The game needs to stay streamlined.

Autoblasters, Twin Laser Turrets, and Bossk's ability all seem to be an attempt to at this sort of variation.

Orange: 1 miss, 5 hits, 1 crit, 1 focus

Red: 2 miss, 3 hits, 1 crit, 2 focus

Black: 3 miss, 1 hit, 1 crit, 3 focus

Not entirely sure I like these /specific/ dice, but the idea is one of those things I think FFG should be beating themselves up over for not thinking of early enough to implement in X-wing.

Specifically, I'd have something like a light die(maybe 5h-2f-1m), one baseline (the usual 1c-3h-2f-2m), and one "heavy" die (this one's trickier, but 3c-1f-4m could work). Not entirely sure about dice that are missing a given symbol since there'd have to be a bunch of other changes to fix certain abilities.

Could always take a nod from Armada and have a face with two standard hits, instead of a crit. It's like a fixed Direct Hit.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

I can buy it. Downside is complexity, and they probably didn't project that the popularity would lead to so many waves and the need for much more design space.

Though I always thought the first mistake was picking a starting point much too low. Starting at 2 and 3 attack dice doesn't allow for much room for variation, and a change in 1 attack die takes you down to nigh useless (HWK), or up to killer (HLC, Phantom).

If the X-Wing was 6 attack dice instead of 3 (and the other game stats adjusted to suit), then an adjustment of an attack die suddenly isn't a major make/break point for a ship, but a minor adjustment. Bonus is that rolling more dice results in a tightening of the bell curve (you can expect a greater % of dice rolls to be closer to average, with less rolls that are on the extremes).

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

That's a worse turret effect than Autoblaster. How disappointing. The reign of the K is over before it could begin.

Oh great, another Armada player here to bag on a game they don't seem to quite get.

Complexity does not equal beauty.

I like the game, but I don't like the rules.

OK.

Has Twin Laser Turret been spoiled? The way you talk about it seems like it has, but I can't find any information.

There was a crappy photo from a Spanish distributors website. Through the magic of image enhancement and people that are literate in multiple languages it has been mostly spoiled. It looks like the turret will cost 6 points and allow you to make two three dice attacks. When an attack hits you cancel all hits and the defender takes one damage.

That's a worse turret effect than Autoblaster. How disappointing. The reign of the K is over before it could begin.

It's also range 2-3. I thought it was a fantastic turret that works well on Rebel HWKs and BTL-A4 Y-wings, especially Horton Salm. It's very likely to get some damage through on high agility targets and is especially useful against anything that depends on tokens for defense.

Having flown Vader pre-ATC, I am going to say that the dismissal of 2 Atk is a bit much. Sure, you shouldn't put all your stock in with expensive 2 Atk ships, but they can work.

I like your thoughts here, OP. The game would be different, that's for sure, but it would certainly open up some design space.

The only question I can think of is...if original game mechanic were such that you had a separate "Attack Accuracy" and "Attack Strength", would the game be as popular and fun as it is? I'm not sure, since the current formula has been amazing at drawing people in and keeping us here with so many subtle skills to learn.

I've mentioned it before as a fix to the X wing. A good way to fix the X wing (without infringing on other ship's design space) would be to make the guns more accurate. For example, there could be a Rogue Squadron title, cost 2, that allows the X wing to roll blue dice instead of red dice. Furthermore, there could be a modification card, let's call it "Refined Laser" or something, that also costs 2 points, and would allow you to roll 1 blue in lieu of 1 red. This way, everyone can theoretically have access to it, but the X wing is the only thing that can replace all of the dice with it, and does so for a much cheaper price.

What is a blue die you ask? Personally, I'm of the opinion that it is 2c, 4h, 1f, 1b (though I'd be open to the idea of 1c, 1 double hit, 4 hit, 1 focus, 1 blank). This means that an X wing is still a 3 dice ship. However, it basically natively has a focus token for every offensive attack. This allows the named pilots to focus on EPTs other than Predator/Lone Wolf/ PTL to stack damage. It also opens up the actions, which should synergize well with the astro slot. Oh yeah, and it makes Proton Torpedoes marginally useful on an X wing.

The X wing hasn't gotten more powerful, it hasn't gotten more maneuverable, but it has gotten more deadly. When a shot is lined up, it's going to hurt. Plus, it's an unique "fix" that hasn't been implemented before, and opens up a new design space. As for the logistics of rolling it out, the X wing fix is likely to come in an Aces pack, so including 3 dice would be acceptable. Oh, and just for SnG, ordnance could then be errata'd to use blue dice for every attack. Though this would require a purchase of the Aces pack in order to make ordnance usable, which goes against FFG's policy. Perhaps make it a 0-1pt mod that allows ordnance to be fired with blue dice, and include it in the Aces pack .

so red dice are to blame?

hmmm...you're just barely missing the real culprits...

so red dice are to blame?

hmmm...you're just barely missing the real culprits...

It's TIE fighters. They're to efficient.

I think 'design choice' is probably a better description than 'fundamental problem'

Yes, everything you've said so far is a reasonably accurate view of how the game currently works, I just don't see how it is a problem.

There are aspects of Accurate/Weak, Inacurate/Strong in the game already. Not many, but they are there, and they could add more pretty simply in the current ruleset.

Others have mentioned but I'll add.

1) Ion cannon/turret is accurate/weak with a debuff.

2) Flechette Cannon is accurate/weak with a debuff

3) Autoblaster Turret is inaccurate/strong

Ten Numbs and Bossk are not necessarily inaccurate, but their abilities lead to extra damage if they hit, or guarantee hits regardless of defense, so they do break the equality of attack to damage.

The design space is there for weapons to;

1) add damage on hit

2) reduce damage on hit

3) modify or ignore defenders results

4) add buffs or debuffs on hit to defender

5) add buffs or debuffs on hit to attacker

Or any combination of them. Really, what you want is already available in the game, perhaps not enough for you yet.

First let's be honest. The simplicity of this game is part of its genius. By the same token players are here cause we get to fly cool Star Wars models. This isn't the best game mechanically or as far as design. The piles of errata, title fixes, etc attest to this. But it's also not terrible either.

I like the idea of different dice. So much so that I've created my own ordinance specific dice and I'm in the process of beginning to play test them. My reccomendation to you is to find an amenable group, make dice you think would fix what you find deficient and play test it. One of the biggest strengths of this game is its broad popularity. This means that no matter how creative a persons idea is you'll find people that feel the same way and will help you enact and refine your ideas. I'd love to know how it goes. If you aren't willing to pick up that ball and run with it let me know as I'm already part way there.

Too many people worry about the things they can't control in this game instead of the things they can.